


Crossing Night

by alternatealto



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Gen, Sick!Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:28:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatealto/pseuds/alternatealto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson has been dead for exactly one year tonight.  House never expected the anniversary would become what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2010 for the Sick!Wilson Community's Halloween Challenge at LiveJournal.

**Crossing Night**

 

  
  
“You know,” House says, “there are a lot of things I’ve never told you.”  
  
He’s on his fourth drink, or is it his fifth?  How do you count, when you fill up the glass any time it shows signs of getting below the half-way point?  Which means pretty much every five minutes or so.  He’s not usually like this, so talkative, when he’s drunk, but there’s just something about the way he feels tonight.  He glances in Wilson’s direction for a second, then looks away again, listening to the rain and the gusts of wind in the darkness outside.  The firelight flickers, and shadows jump with it.  House doesn’t notice.  
  
“A lot of things.  Things I should have said.”  He pauses.  “About us.”  
  
He pauses again, but there’s no way Wilson can answer that.  House shifts on his side of the sofa, rubs at his thigh, winces.  “If I had . . . maybe it wouldn’t have meant anything.”  He stops to take a drink, then, noticing that Wilson’s glass is still sitting untouched he grabs that one instead and downs it.  “You always were a lightweight.”  Wilson doesn’t protest; not even the joking kind of protest he usually makes.  House sighs and re-fills the glass, puts it back within reach of Wilson’s side of the sofa.  
  
“Anyway . . .” he looks away, across the room.  “Anyway.  This would be a stupid time to do it, so I’m not going to.”    
  
Wilson doesn’t say anything, but House can feel it, feel the way he’s waiting.  He’s done this to House in the past – not speaking, just maintaining a receptive silence that House eventually, inevitably, fills up with things he never intended to say.    
  
“I’m not going to,” House repeats.  He grabs his cane and starts to pry himself up off the sofa, but there’s just a peripheral flicker of movement to his right, in that direction he’s not looking, and the fight goes out of him.  He subsides back onto the sofa, leans over the cane, covers his eyes with his hand.   
  
“Damn you.”  
  
There’s no answer, but he can see Wilson’s expression without needing to look:  a little apologetic, a little wry.  Very, very caring.    
  
“I can’t do this,” House says, suddenly, loudly.  “I mean it, Wilson.  I can’t.”  
  
No answer.  
  
“I thought . . .   No.  I  _deluded myself into thinking_  this would make a difference. It  _doesn’t_.  It  _won’t_.  Nothing can change what’s happened, doesn’t matter if it happened yesterday or . . .”  His voice trails off; he doesn’t bother listening for the reply he knows isn’t coming.  
  
He doesn’t want any more whiskey.  Any more, and this time it will turn him maudlin instead of the usual brooding or biting or self-destructive.  He’s on the verge of it already, his eyes are burning, his nose and throat are thick and his breath hitches.  In a sudden surge of fury, he stands and sweeps the cane across the top of the coffee table, shoving glasses, bottles, papers and random items from his pockets onto the floor in a muddle of broken glass and whiskey fumes.  Deliberately, viciously then, he slams the cane into the table top, again and again and _again_ , until there’s a sharp crack of breaking wood and he wrenches the cane apart and flings the two pieces  across the room.  One of them hits the piano, leaving an ugly mark on the finish.  The other bounces off the wall and rolls toward the kitchen door.  
  
He turns then, to look at the other side of the sofa, at the man who isn’t there.   _Isn’t there_.  Isn’t, won’t,  _can’t_  be there, ever again.  He fills his eyes with the emptiness that’s all there is to replace him.  
  
“House.”  
  
The word comes from behind him, like a gunshot in the suddenly quiet room.  He freezes in stark terror, for that voice can no longer speak.  
  
“House . . .”  The way Wilson has said it a thousand times, the name trailing off into a sigh.    
  
No.  No, this . . . this is too cruel.  Why is his mind doing this to him, why –   
  
“It’s been a year.  I thought . . . I hoped maybe you would have . . . adjusted.”  
  
He’s suddenly on the edge of hysteria, biting back a wild, mad, peal of laughter.  _Adjusted?_   Adjusted to _this?_    To having half of himself, half of his  _being_ , ripped away without warning?  When he didn’t even know he had half of himself to lose?   How the hell do you  _adjust_   to something like that?  He can’t adjust.  He can barely endure, barely force himself to keep going through the mechanics of something that isn’t really life any longer.  
  
“House, you have to stop this.”  
  
The words come at last, on a rush of sick relief as he realizes what this has to mean. “No.  No, I have to go on.  I have to keep going, Wilson, because it’s the only way I can do it now, because now it’s started.  First it’s you.  Then . . . then Kutner.   Amber.  Then patients I couldn’t help, then patients I  _wouldn’t_ help.  You’ll all be there.  And I’ll be . . .”  He breaks off, choking.  “I’ll be someplace where I think you’re real, and that’s as close to – as close to – ”  
  
“No.”  
  
“ _Yes!_   What else is there for me, Wilson?   _What the hell else is there?_ ”  
  
“That’s why I’m here.”  
  
“You’re  _not_ here.”  
  
“For tonight, I am.  Turn around.  Look at me.”  
  
“No.”  
  
A sigh.  He can picture Wilson pinching his nose.  “All right.”    
  
There’s the sound of footsteps, the rustle of clothing.  Impossible noises.   _Hallucinatory_ noises.  He squeezes his eyes tight, covers them with his hands.  
  
“Will you look at me now?”  The voice comes from in front of him.  
  
“No.”  
  
“House.  Please.”  The voice is closer, much closer.  He stiffens.  Apparently his mind has truly snapped, and there’s no mercy left in him even for himself, because he can  _feel_   Wilson’s closeness.  “I don’t have much time.”  
  
“Door’s right over there.”  
  
This time the sigh is pure Wilson-exasperation.  Two hands grab his wrists and force his arms down, and he can’t help it – he opens his eyes, and the brown eyes that look back at him are filled with Wilson’s patent blend of concern, annoyance, and caring.  
  
“You,” Wilson says, “are the most stubborn, annoying, disbelieving _jackass_  on either side of the worlds, do you know that?  Sit down, you idiot, and listen to me.”   He pushes, and suddenly the strength goes out of House’s legs and he’s sitting on the sofa again.  Wilson looks with distaste at the puddle of whiskey on the floor before seating himself on the sofa next to House, in the same place he wasn’t only a few moments before.  
  
House’s heart is hammering, pounding hard against his rib cage.  He hates this, hates this,  _hates_  the tricks his brain is playing on him, the way his mind is falling apart before his body, despite his best efforts to make things go the other way.  At the same time, he’s taking in everything about the other man, hungrily, desperate to keep seeing him after not having seen him for so long.  Wilson looks . . . good.  Healthy, rested.  There’s no sign of the –   
  
His heart speeds up again.  This can’t be real, because the last time he looked at . . . at Wilson’s . . . body . . .    
  
“Relax,” Wilson says.  “House, there’s no need to be afraid.  I won’t hurt you.  I shouldn’t even have to  _tell_ you that.”  He rests a hand on House’s arm, strokes gently.  “Will you listen to me now?”  
  
He doesn’t trust his voice.  He nods.  
  
“Finally.  Okay.  Yes, I’m dead.  Yes, I’m  _here_.  No, the two things are not mutually exclusive.”  
  
House snorts.  
  
“I’m here because . . . because of a lot of things, but mostly because you’re stuck, House.  You’ve admitted I’m dead, but you won’t finish letting go.  And it’s hurting you, and it’s shortening your life.”  
  
Which is the whole  _point_ , doesn’t Wilson  _get_ that?  
  
“And there are things you have to  _do_  with that life, important things.  They won’t look important at the time, but trust me, they will be.  But they can’t happen if you’re dead.  So I’m here to make a deal with you.”  
  
“Why bother?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Look.  This is a hallucination.  You’re  _not real_ , and nothing you can do is going to convince me otherwise. Anything you can come up with to try, I can find a way to disprove.”  
  
Wilson gets that look, the expression that comes when he thinks he’s about to score on House.  “Here,” he says, and pulls something out of his pants pocket.  He tries to hand it to House, but House won’t take it.  Wilson puts it on the table.  “What is this?” he asks as he sets it down.  
  
“It’s . . . that watch of your great-grandfather’s.  You gave it to me before you . . . died.”  
  
“And you put it into the inside pocket of the suit coat I was buried in, just before they closed the coffin, so it would be buried with me.”  
  
“What’s your point?  If I can hallucinate  _you_ , I can hallucinate a goddamn watch.  Obviously.  Because I  _am_.”  
  
“House, just . . . here’s the deal.  I’m going to have to go soon, so just listen to me, okay?”  Wilson pauses for a moment, as if he’s getting his thoughts in order before speaking again.  “I died a year ago, just after midnight, so technically I died on Halloween. On Samhain, the turn of the year, on . . . on that one night when there really  _is_  a point of contact between the two worlds.  And apparently the rules apply even if you’re Jewish.”  He smiled slightly.  “And since it’s the anniversary of my death as well as the . . . the Crossing Night, I get to manifest a lot more effectively than most of the spirits who come back.    
  
“Here’s the bargain I want to make.  Go on living.  Stop trying to passively or actively do away with yourself.  _Live_ , so you can do the things you have to.  You want to live, House. Somewhere inside you, in spite of the pain, you  _want_  to live, because if you didn’t, you’d already have killed yourself.  So do it.  Live.   And in exchange, I’ll come back every year, until . . . until you ask me not to.   I’ll come, and I’ll stay as long as I can.”  
  
House frowns.  “What’s the watch got to do with this?”  
  
“The watch . . . is to remind you that this really happened.   When I leave tonight, it will still be here.  And no matter what you do with it, it’s going to come back to you for the next year, in ways that you won’t expect and that can’t be hallucinations.  Every time it comes back, it will remind you that you made a bargain, that you promised me to live. Do everything you can to get rid of it, go ahead.  Sell it, give it away, destroy it.  A year from now you’ll be holding it in your hand, and I’ll be here again.  Do we have a deal?”  
  
House looks at him, taking in the seriousness of his expression, the half-concealed hope in the dark eyes.  “Okay,” he says, slowly.  “For a year.   After that . . .”  
  
“After that,” Wilson smiles, “We won’t need to bargain.” His expression changes then.  “I have to . . . I have to go soon.  House . . . ” His voice trails off, he looks at House yearningly.  “I – I’ll miss you.  I’ll be around, but you won’t know it and I won’t be able to talk to you, so . . . I’ll miss you.”  
  
The taut swelling is back in House’s throat.  This . . . even if this is only a hallucination, it beats the hell out of the  _nothing_  he’s had for the past year.  “I love you,” he blurts. “Wilson, I – ”  
  
Wilson’s eyes brighten, and he leans in.  Warm lips find House’s.  The kiss is like any other, except that he never actually kissed Wilson in life.  Then Wilson draws back, stands up.  “I’ll be back in a year,” he says, and goes to the door, opens it, walks through.  It closes behind him.  
  
House listens, but there is no sound of footsteps outside the door.  
  
The only sound is the quiet ticking of the watch on the table.  
  
  
* * * * *   
    
The next morning, whatever mixture of hope and doubt and expectation he took to bed with him has vanished, and the heavy bleakness of the past twelve months wraps around him as soon as he arises.  He breathes it in with the steam from the shower, brushes his teeth with it, rolls it under his arms.  This is the way his life is now,  _this_  is why he doesn’t want it to go on.  
  
He remembers breaking the cane last night, so he digs his spare out of the bedroom closet and limps into the living room.  There, on the table in front of the sofa, the watch gleams in bright Edwardian gold.    
  
House hunts through drawers and shelves until he finds a hammer, then uses it to beat the watch until it is a twisted, mangled mess of flattened gold and shattered glass, loose gears and sad, dangling springs.  He takes it to work with him, and drops it into the hospital’s incinerator.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
Two weeks later, Cuddy catches him as he comes in the door at his usual (late) time.  She’s holding a package in one hand, and gesturing him into her office with the other.  He sighs and stumps across the lobby, there are any number of reasons why she’s probably pissed at him.  But instead of scolding and demanding clinic hours, she actually looks embarrassed.  
  
“House, this package came in for you earlier this morning.  Security just got through checking it – they thought it was suspicious, because . . . well, you’ll see why.  So they took it down to X-ray, but it turned out to be harmless.  Here.”  
  
She hands him the padded envelope.  The soft ticking sound tells him what, impossibly, has to be inside.  He sits down unceremoniously on Cuddy’s office couch and tears the package open, and there it is, solid and golden, set to the right time.  The chain slithers between his fingers to dangle, swaying slightly, an off-beat pendulum.  
  
“Beautiful,” Cuddy comments.  House’s other hand is digging into the shipping envelope; he finds the accompanying note, a simple piece of blue note paper folded in two.  
 _  
My Dear Doctor House,  
            In going through our safe-deposit box, my husband and   
        I came across this watch, which once belonged to James’ great-  
        grandfather.  We thought James had taken it with him last time  
        he was here, but it seems he decided to leave it in the bank.  It  
        was a favorite of his, and we thought you might wish to have it  
        as a memory of him.  He often said you were the best friend he’d  
        ever had.    
                        Sincerely yours,_  
  
  
And, in graceful script, Wilson’s mother’s signature.  He hands the note to Cuddy and sits, staring at the watch in his hand.  When he looks up at her again, he sees her blink rapidly a few times before handing the note back to him.  “That’s so thoughtful of them,” she says.  “So kind.”  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees, through numb lips.  He slides the watch into the pocket of his jeans, folds the note and sticks it in the same pocket, then gets up and limps out of the office, leaving the torn package behind.  
  
He writes something appropriate to Wilson’s parents on hospital stationery, mails it in the lobby, and walks across the street to the small park, where he pulls the watch out of his pocket and uses the chain to swing it around and around and finally sling it into the lake, where it skips across the surface a few times and sinks into the depths.  The note he shreds into dozens and dozens of tiny scraps, which flutter to the ground and cling to the dying autumn grass like out-of-season forget-me-nots.  Then he goes home and stares at the television, using its noise to drown out his thoughts, and his fears.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
A little more than a month goes by this time, and he decides he’s safe, until the watch turns up inside a brightly wrapped red-and-green Christmas gift some unknown person left on his desk.  It’s the only gift he receives that year.    
  
The next day he takes it to a pawn shop and sells it, then heads to the track with the money.  A horse named Hobgoblin wins him the trifecta, and he goes home several thousand dollars richer, to find the watch dangling from its chain on the inside knob of his front door.   
  
This time he keeps it more than three months before looking up a random address on the internet and shipping it to Guam, with a fake return address in Minneapolis. After a month, as he’s getting on his bike, a breathless young woman runs up to him to say, “Sir, I saw you drop this over there on the sidewalk.  I don’t think you want to lose it,”– and watch and chain are back in his hands once more.  
  
He waits another few months, then drives to a junkyard, throws the watch into the car crusher, watches as the rusted Chevy Nova it landed in is reduced to a block of scrap.  Six weeks later, someone’s poodle runs up to him on the sidewalk outside his apartment to set the watch at his feet and bark proudly before scampering away again. The watch gleams up at him, cheerfully undamaged, not even a cracked crystal.  
  
It’s almost October.  
  
He gives up, goes to a bank, rents a safe deposit box.  He tucks the watch away inside, then leaves, taking care to drop the safe-deposit key down a storm drain as he limps away.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
October is on the cusp of November, and evening comes early.  Small children dash about in oversized costumes, excited by the darkness, energized by excessive sugar.  
  
House lights the gas fire, turns off the rest of the lights.  Over the past year, he now realizes, he’s somehow come to accept that yes, last October’s visit was real.  The watch has come back in too many unexpected ways, too often with witnesses, to be simply the product of his mind.  He sits on the sofa as evening deepens into night, and when the last bit of daylight has left the sky there is a knock at his door, a familiar cadence.  He gets up, opens it.  
  
Wilson is there, hands in his pockets, slouching a little, smiling.  House stands aside, gestures him in.  They sit on the sofa, as they always have.  As they always will.  They share jokes, then more serious conversation, then jokes again.  Wilson’s eyes are shining in the firelight; House is sure his own are probably shining, too.  Wilson leans in, they kiss, then kiss again.    
  
When it gets late, Wilson reaches into the pocket of his suit coat – even as a ghost, he’s carefully professional in his attire – and hands the watch to House.  The gold gleams at him in its old, friendly way.   
  
“Do we have a bargain?” Wilson asks, his voice just slightly teasing.  
  
“Yeah.”  House swallows.  “And . . . and I still love you.”  
  
“And I love you,” Wilson tells him softly.  He gets in one more kiss, gets up, walks to the door.  “Live, House.  Live well.  Until next year.”    
  
The door closes behind him.  The watch shines on the coffee table.  House stares into the flames.  
  
 _Until next year . . ._  
  


 


End file.
